Inside The Marketing Strategy Of The Louvre, The World's Most Visited Museum.

Paul TalbotContributor

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With more than ten million visitors last year, a 25% increase from 2017, why would the Louvre need a marketing strategy?

For the past 18 years, the world’s most visited museum has been getting a hand with marketing projects from Accenture Interactive and the Accenture Foundation.

I recently asked Claude Chaffiotte, managing director for Accenture Interactive in France and Benelux, to illuminate some of the work that’s being done.

Paul Talbot: Where does marketing fit into the strategic plan you’ve been working on for The Louvre?

Claude Chaffiotte: The Louvre aims to create meaningful experiences for visitors before, during, and after their visit.

To meet this goal, Accenture Interactive is helping the museum to better understand its visitors, including the scientists and researcher community, in order to offer a more qualitative experience and create relevant digital services.

As a key sponsor of the digital transformation, the CMO of the Louvre plays a pivotal role, leading many initiatives such as brand positioning tailored to the different channels, graphic design chart, and internal and external communications.

Talbot: One of the objectives is ‘(to) enrich the visitor experience before, during and after their visit to the Louvre.’ Could you provide a few examples of how digital resources might be used to achieve this?

Chaffiotte: In 2015, we enriched the visitor experience of the ‘Petite Galerie,’ a permanent exhibition space in the heart of the museum, by developing a website and mobile app using augmented reality.

For instance, the deteriorated ‘Dancers of Delphi’ sculpture was ‘restored’ using augmented reality, enabling visitors to see this masterpiece in its original state.

In 2019, we are initiating the revamp of the Louvre website and adding AI-based ‘conversational functionalities’ to help visitors prepare ahead of their visits.  This will allow Louvre agents to free up their time to focus on added-value services.  

We also implemented a digital tool for the agents that allows them to track daily incidents and solve them in real-time.

Talbot: How much physical capacity does the Louvre have for visitor growth and how can digital innovations address some of these challenges?

Chaffiotte: The Louvre had more than 10 million visitors last year, a historical record, despite being located among the protests of the yellow vest movement.  The trend for 2019 seems to point to another record year, specifically with the long-awaited Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition to celebrate the 500th anniversary of his death.

With record visits in 2018 and anticipated in 2019, the Louvre had to rethink how to best direct the flow of visitors.

Digital innovations will help solve these issues by improving yield management, optimizing visitor traffic, and providing online access to exhibitions.  New innovations will also enable an improved experience for the Louvre agents, allowing them to provide enhanced services to visitors.

Talbot: What innovations do you foresee taking place with the marketing of museums over the next few years?

Chaffiotte: Innovations to attract new visitors and to increase the loyalty of existing ones, using digital to:

• Facilitate the access to all art collections of the Louvre, including art pieces that are not exhibited in the museum.
• Better target specific visitors (e.g. people under 35, regular visitors, people who never visited the museum, etc.).
• Innovations to better amplify the art collections, particularly art pieces that are not exhibited, and art knowledge.  The Louvre owns around 620,000 art pieces, but only 35,000 are exhibited.  The digitization of art pieces will allow the general public, academics, scientists, and researchers to access the entirety of the museum’s collection. 

Talbot: Any other insights you’d like to share?

Chaffiotte: Working together for 18 years now, we share the same vision: art is innovation and innovation is art.  We also share the same goal of revamping the museum to place the visitors, employees, professionals, and researchers at the center of this strategic initiative and to make the experience for each visitor as unique as the museum itself.

10 Secrets Of The Louvre, The World's Most Visited Museum

Alex Holyoake

Think you know everything about the world’s most-visited museum? These fun facts may surprise you.

For many people all over the world, a visit to the Louvre is a major bucket list item during a trip to Paris. The most-visited museum in the world is also one of the largest—the total length of the façade measures nearly two miles—and one of the richest in artistic treasures (the Louvre exhibits 38,000 works and has an additional 422,000 in storage). The museum employs 2,290 staff members, including 65 curators and 145 conservationists. (Keep in mind: 1,200 of those staff members are security guards). The Louvre even has its own squad of 48 firefighters on call 24 hours a day. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This monumental museum contains many secrets inside its hallowed halls, just waiting to be discovered.

It was originally built as a palace by François I

The Renaissance king famed for the gorgeous castles in the Loire Valley actually razed a 12th-century fortress on the right bank to make way for the Louvre palace. Construction began in the mid-1500s, but only part of the building was completed. Every subsequent French king added onto the structure: if you pay attention, you can spot several different architectural styles. One of the most impressive parts is the Colonnade, which was designed by Louis Le Vau, Claude Perrault, and the painter Charles Le Brun, whose handiwork you can admire in the Apollo Gallery.

You can still glimpse remnants of the original moat

Though the 13th-century fortress built by King Philippe Augustus was destroyed, archeologists excavated the original moat 23 feet below the Cour Carré during construction of the glass pyramid. Today you can peek at it in the medieval part of the Sully wing.

It took 200 years for the entire building to become a museum

Louis XIV was the last king to use the Louvre as a royal residence—he moved his court to Versailles in 1682. In 1793, during the French Revolution, the Musée Central des Arts opened to the public in the Grande Galerie. Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon III both added to the Louvre, enhancing their own prestige. It wasn’t until 1993, however, that the whole building was used as a museum for the first time.

Many of the works in the Louvre were plundered by Napoleon as spoils of war

Many of the French kings were great art collectors and commissioned the most talented architects of the day to contribute to the building, but many of the museum’s greatest works were looted during Napoleon’s campaigns in Italy, Egypt, and beyond.

I.M. Pei’s famous glass pyramid was enormously controversial

The glass pyramid by American architect I.M. Pei today is seen as a symbol of the Louvre itself, but when it was first revealed in 1989, some critics called it “sacrilegious” to tamper with the architectural integrity of the historic palace. Designed to welcome 4.5 million visitors per year, the Louvre received 8.6 million visitors in 2015. A major construction project is currently working to alleviate the long lines by reconfiguring the entrances and reception areas around the pyramid.

The museum’s largest painting is in the same room as the Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa may be the Louvre’s most famous painting, but many people don’t realize that the museum’s largest painting is actually in the same room. The Wedding Feast at Cana by Venetian Renaissance master Veronese is sometimes mistaken for the Last Supper, but actually depicts Christ’s first miracle of transforming water to wine.

Da Vinci Code fans can embark on a themed route of the museum

The Louvre has several official routes recommended to help visitors navigate the enormous museum, and the Da Vinci Code inspires one of them. If you embark on this path, you’ll follow in the footsteps of the protagonists Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu and learn to separate fact from fiction. You can also do a themed scavenger hunt with THATLou.

You can see what the building looked like in Napoleon III’s day

Tucked away in a remote corner of the Richelieu wing, Napoleon III’s drawing room gives visitors a glimpse at what the sumptuous palace looked like when the emperor used it for state functions.

Skip the line and become a Louvre expert

To beat the crowds, you can purchase tickets at any FNAC bookstore (the $1.75 surcharge is well worth it) and enter through the Passage Richelieu. Download the museum’s official app ($1.99) for pre-planned paths through the museum and commentary by the curators. You can even plan your own night at the museum—it stays open until 9:45 pm on Wednesdays and Fridays.

The Louvre is still acquiring additional works

Even though the museum's collection only includes art made until the 19th century, it's still acquiring works. In fact, the Louvre recently announced a joint acquisition with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam of two portraits by Rembrandt—the master painter’s only full-length portraits. They are on view until June 13, 2016 and then will be moved to the Rijksmuseum.

By Laura Itzkowitz, www.travelandleasure.com

Travelore Tips: How To Skip The Longest Lines In Paris

Tourists from all over the world queue up outside Paris museums and monuments, but the worst lines are at the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. You can avoid many a wait with the right pass—there’s the Paris Museum Pass, which provides entry to 60 museums over a two-, four-, or six-day period, and the pricier Paris Pass, which admits you to additional tourist attractions—but these make financial sense only if you’re planning to blitz at least two or three museums per day for at least two days in a row. Neither made sense for my family on our trip to Paris this past April: We wanted to visit museums only when it was raining, and of course we couldn't predict when rain would hit. Nor did it make sense to reserve—and prepay for—entry to the Eiffel Tower, since that would mean committing to a date and time: We wanted to ascend the Tower only when it wasn't raining and visibility was good, and of course we couldn't predict that either.

So I had to find other ways to avoid the lines. The kids were too jet lagged for us to arrive at sites early in the morning (my usual tactic for minimizing wait times), so here’s what we did:

When we arrived at the Pyramid that is the main entrance to the Louvre—on a Wednesday at 1 p.m.—the wait was more than an hour long.

So we walked three minutes away to a side door called the Porte des Lions, where there was no line at all.

As for the Eiffel Tower, we arrived on a Thursday at 10:30 a.m. The line at the elevator was 2 hours long.  …there was no line to take the stairs to the second floor, then the elevator from there to the top. (You can’t ascend the stairs beyond the second floor.) So we bought tickets to walk the 670 steps to the second floor, then ride the elevator.

Contributed by Wendy Perrin, www.cntraveler.com

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